


Madmen and Magnesium

by geordi_cat



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4360637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geordi_cat/pseuds/geordi_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jacob Riis' 1890 photos of New York's tenements showcased the filth that recent Irish and German immigrants lived in. But that's not all his camera captured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madmen and Magnesium

            The night before the Captain America exhibit opened at the Smithsonian, Steve was invited, along with Smithsonian sponsors, to a walk through. In order to sweeten the pot, the museum had opened up two other limited time exhibits for the guests to wander. One was a retrospective of the tenement photography of Jacob Riis.

            Steve's Mam had told stories of the madmen who invaded the tenement apartments late at night, setting off flash guns full of gunpowder and magnesium powder, no warning, no questions, just the door flung open, the camera thunked down, the flash set off, the photo taken, and the retreating footsteps leaving behind flash-blinded subjects, terrified children, and occasionally fires.

            The stories had always been told with the slightly fantastical feel of the secondhand, by the time Sarah had been born Riis had moved on to other things. These were stories to tell naughty children, be good or the madman of the tenements will come and blow fire at you! No one had ever gotten his name, he never spoke to his subjects, and the presentations he used the photographs for were not something the tenement dwellers were welcome at. Even when the dirtiest and most run-down buildings were torn down, no one knew it was due to his rhetoric.

            By the time Steve had come along his Mam and Da had moved into a Old Law tenement, not great, but an improvement on the tiny run down place Sarah had been brought up in. It also lacked madmen with cameras.

            The pictures held hints of home.

            Steve hadn't expected that. From the description in the catalogue he'd expected unrelenting misery, filth and despair captured in silver nitrate. Even as a child the pre-law tenements were spoken of in terms of how much better the post-law ones were. But while the pictures did depict all these things they also showed connections. They showed people crammed two or more to a bed, sometimes for warmth, sometimes just simply due to lack of room. Families asleep on the fire escapes during the summer, when that was the only place to escape the heat. People rolling cigars, making lace, sewing clothes, anything for a few extra cents.

            And the streetscapes, oh the streetscapes. Vegetable markets and butcher shops and barber shops; people gathering on the street to escape the still air of home, community on the asphalt.

            The past rose up, opened its mouth, and swallowed him whole.

            After Hydra, after Ultron, after the Winter Soldier faded and Bucky returned, Steve mentioned that a security camera had caught him at the Smithsonian Captain America exhibit. Bucky quietly replied that while that exhibit had given him information on who he might be, it was the Riis retrospective that had started the return of his memories. They had wiped who he was and who Captain America was, but the tenements as a place hadn't been considered important enough to eradicate. After all, who cared if he remembered a hovel?

**Author's Note:**

> This came about from a section on the early use of flash in photography in Season 1, Episode 4:Light of How We Got to Now with Steven Johnson. It occurred to me that someone who burst into your apartment after midnight, set off a bright explosion, and left without saying a word to you, might get a bit of a reputation among the residents.


End file.
